Another Pennine Bridleway ride on Monday, this time with Phil who’s wanted to ride this route for a while. He was camping down near Buxton so I thought it would be a good idea to ride south down the A6 on the mountain bike (through the Levenshulme and Stockport badlands) to meet him at Peak Forest. There was a headwind all the way there and I was already starting to feel tired before I’d even reached the rendezvous point.

Even though I’d done some recovery rides in the preceding week I clearly wasn’t fully recovered from my efforts at CLIC just a week earlier. Oh well, I’m sure it’ll get easier once I’m riding with someone else.

We set off up the PBW and it was obvious that this wasn’t going to be a fast ride. I soldiered on but left Phil to carry on to the end of the bridleway alone – I bailed near Oldham (Diggle, actually) and headed west towards home. It was still a 75 mile ride though, so it’s not like I wimped out after an hour or owt 😉

I was expecting to feel even worse on last night’s 40 mile (and hilly) road ride, but I didn’t. I felt great. Strong as ever. How weird is that? After all that messing about recovering, all my body needed was a great big 8 hour ride to feel strong again!

Oh, and in case Dave’s out there wondering, South to North is definitely not as good as North to South.